Tag Archives: SAHM

I just looked back at the handful of posts I’ve written. One of the first was about my fear of being a full time stay at home mom (SAHM). Funny how life changes … I avoided that fear as I now work full time.

It’s, of course, been replaced by a new fear. (Why would we ever just live our lives and not stress over every detail? But I digress.) I have this overwhelming obsession with never being late to day care to pick up my kids. If I arrive after 5 (it closes at 5:15), I feel like I’m late. The fear? That my daughters will ever think I’m not coming. When I was a little girl at camp, my parents were late once to visiting day. I went to camp for 10 years and they were late once. Maybe 10 minutes or something but definitely after all of the parents had gotten there. I was at volleyball when I saw them coming across the athletic field. I honestly thought they weren’t coming and I remember exactly how I felt. I was 8 or 9 when this happened and I can’t handle my daughters ever feeling it. My daughters are only 3 years old and 5 months old and when I arrive at day care the 5 month old is usually sleeping and the 3 year old is having the time of her life. In fact, she’s having so much fun it’s usually difficult to get her to leave for home so why am I projecting this fear on her? She always runs over to me and hugs me and screams, “MOMMY!” But, she then goes immediately back to playing. She does not notice if I’m late.

I often wonder why we can’t just be happy. Or maybe why I can’t just be happy. I got what I wanted. I’m not a full time SAHM. But working full time and obsessing over every detail of my children’s lives has left me insane. My house is a disaster. It’s literally the last thing I think about and the truth is, I am a slob. I always have been. Except now I am completely stressed out that I’m teaching my daughters to be slobs. I wish my husband would pick up the living room sometime. It’s not like he does nothing. He makes dinner and does the dishes and puts the 3 yr old to bed. But then he goes to bed. The guilt over the house is eating me up. Being a slob, normally mess doesn’t bother me but the mess a 3 year old makes is too much even for me. Thing is, I’m just as exhausted as my husband. Once both kids are in bed I can barely move so the living room doesn’t get clean.

There’s more of course, when would that be all that’s on our plates? These days I think I’d be happy working 3 or 4 days a week and staying at home the other days. Then I realize that I’ll find something wrong with that scenario too. I enjoy the freedom of being at work. I trust my day care completely. I enjoy the independence. I would be ok with not having the exhaustion and overwhelming part but, as my father always said when I was little, “When you walk down the great valley of life, you can’t always get what you want”. (Yes, that was one of the most annoying phrases to grow up hearing all the time!) So it’s time to embrace my world and be happy. I’ll just remember my glass of wine that is needed at dinner every day!

Like this:

Have you heard this before, “You want to be a writer? Write about something you know.” So I’m writing about being a Mom, something I know all about. Of course I only know what I’ve already experienced and hopefully I’ve made the right decisions along the way. One of those decisions was to go back to work full time. No more Stay At Home Mom for me. Is it wrong to say I’m happy? I miss my kids tremendously (and the control I have over their schedules). I went back to work at 5 weeks post-partum (definitely too soon but I didn’t have much control over that) and now I think I’m a better mom and person because I have time for my own creative outlet. Sounds selfish to say it out loud but I know that 90% of you moms reading this know exactly what I mean.

I want to quickly illustrate just how crazy life got for us in September. Hopefully it’ll shed a little light on why my head is spinning as I try to hold tight onto anything I may know or have known or am learning. Our beautiful Jaclyn came 5 weeks early and we were not prepared at all for that. I was in the hospital for the standard 4 nights after a c-section and Jaclyn was there in the NICU for 11 days. She was the easiest NICU case there, thank g-d! She was born on September 19th and came home on Monday, September 30th. Friday of that same week my husband was laid off. We can’t decide if they were being nice and waited until she came home from the NICU or if they would have laid him off 1 month before a new baby came had we not gone early. Either way, the company made their choice and lost an amazingly dedicated employee. That put us in scramble mode for income as I was a Stay At Home Mom. Enter my mother… she found herself in a pickle right after this happened. She needed help in her business and thankfully I was able to step in. Hence going back to work at 5 weeks post-partum.

So now I’m a full time, working mom with 2 kids. The last 2 months have left me with a feeling that I just can’t wrap my brain about what I know any more. How do you keep it all straight? And I know that I’m supposed to know everything – Mom’s are the go-to for an answer to everything, right? Even at my age I still call my mother for anything I may be unsure of. Let’s see… I should know everything about being a Mom, a Wife, a Friend, a Sister, a Daughter, and now a Full Time Employee who knows what she’s doing at work. Did I miss a role here?

What a learning curve this is! I’m curious as to how this all will affect me: what will become less important to me and my every day, who will I surround myself with, what will these experiences be like as I’m doing all of it and who I will be in 5 years. And let’s remember… I work for my mother! So we have to both learn how to stay in the close mother/daughter relationship we have while we learn how to act as boss/employee.

She and I have tried this before. Many years ago before I met my husband and had my kids and, in my mind, had a true grasp of what responsibility actually is. It did not go well. Let’s just leave it at that. This time, I’m happy to say that it is working. We are able to keep work and life separate. We are still as close as can be and I’m doing a good job at work. At least she keeps telling me I am!

What I didn’t expect is that it’s changing how I see my mother. She worked when I was young and my whole family could never (still can’t) relate to the amount she works. She has this incredible passion that I can actually see now as opposed to just hear her talk about. It hasn’t been smooth for her as a working mom, even with adult kids. She works ALL of the time and we could never cut her any slack for it. Now I can and I do – much to the chagrin of my family. I have no idea how she gets it all done. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be as amazing as she is and it’s giving me more to strive for. I hope to share this passion with my daughters and instill in them a strong work ethic. But being a parent and in this situation now, I hope that I can find a better balance between work and family so that there is no resentment towards me as the working mom. I hope to be able to acknowledge the changes that will occur within my family over the years and with our family needs so that I can continue to keep the balance. That could mean working less or working more but not working ALL of the time. I hope to show my daughters that we can be powerful as working women and loving as mother’s at the same time. Thankfully, I work for my mom who will let this “employee” take off for doctor’s appointments and school recitals and sick kids and anything else that pops up. She’ll be taking off for those recitals too – after all, they are her grandkids!

So what do I know? I know I married a good man. I know my children are beautiful and watching them grow is a gift. I know that I am blessed with a family I like to be with let alone love. I know that having people to rely on is imperative in life. I know that I enjoy working and will continue to work forever. I know that I don’t know it all and that I have so much left to learn. I know that I’m looking forward to that learning and to teaching my daughters what I’ve learned. I know that watching them learn is the coolest thing ever. I know that I’m happy, even with the everyday drama of life and that this may be the only roller coaster ride that I don’t run screaming from.

I’m sitting in my room working while my daughter is in day care and I’m realizing that I have only a few more weeks of day care left. Soon I will no longer be making the money I need to in order to pay for day care. Now, I love my daughter with all my heart and I am more excited than I thought possible to meet the little girl who will be born in October but as I realize how little time is left, I’m struck with an incredible amount of fear! Am I alone? I hope not and I don’t think so!

I admire all of you full time SAHMs out there. The amount stamina and patience needed is unbelievable. I honestly question if I have what it takes. And the lack of freedom … again, something that terrifies me. As it is my only escape from mommy-hood and back to the life I lived for so long comes from day care. My husband is in his dream job (YAY) but the hours are ridiculous.

I recently had a doctors appointment. It wasn’t planned. I called and asked to be seen that day, a non-day care day. I had no one to watch my daughter so off the two of us went to the OB. I made sure I had her backpack filled with toys, juice, food to bribe her into good behavior and the “piece di resistance”… the iPad.

As I lay strapped to a machine having a non-stress test (a 20 minute test where they time the baby’s heartbeat and check for movement – she did GREAT by the way!), Sari started asking to go to the bathroom. For the first time in the month and a half she’s been potty trained, I had to ask her to hold it in. I needed 3 more minutes! She did wonderful but it led to 3 trips to the bathroom before she agreed to get on the potty. Thankfully it was the OB office so most of the people in the waiting room were mommies and laughed with me at the insanity. The time we stayed in the waiting room, my daughter literally ran in circles. She was having a great time but it was not standard waiting room etiquette!

On the way home she had to go potty again so we pulled over. Problem here is that my daughter likes to play in the car and doesn’t love getting strapped into her car seat. It took me 10 minutes to get her to sit back down in the seat. I don’t like just putting her in the seat – it doesn’t work anyway. She is a very strong little girl! So I have to pull out the counting and threatening to take away whatever she is playing with. That worked but put me in a bad mood. I hate having to do that with her and talking in my “mean mommy” voice.

She’s blissfully napping now. Only took me 25 minutes to get her to lay in her bed, stay there, stop talking to me and then fall asleep.

My husband doesn’t understand. Everything comes naturally to him. When I mentioned to him how I already see where our daughter will regress when her sister is born, his response was, “So don’t let her regress.” It sounded like he was shrugging his shoulders when he said it (we were on the phone) and I thought, “Don’t LET her? What are you crazy? It’s not that easy and you aren’t in that much control over this little human being!” Clearly my natural response is panic and stress. For him, it’s ease. Can you imagine how frustrating that can be for me?

For this reason I hate talking with him about my fear of no day care. He doesn’t understand. He can leave the house every day and come home whenever he likes. He can make evening plans and then let me know. Its strange and unsettling to have to ask permission to leave the house all by myself. Even then I cross my fingers he can actually get home from work in time for me to leave. For this reason, I’ve given up making plans in the evening. When there’s a get together or a board meeting for a group I’m a part of, I don’t go. I’m even trying to step off the board because I can’t attend any meetings.

Thankfully, my girlfriends understand what I’m going through. Some of them are SAHMs and some work. Both have their own perspective which helps me grow comfortable with the new life I’m facing. I am holding on to this: As a professional event planner, I know that it all gets done. As a mommy, I know that we somehow manage to get it all done. I know that I’ll figure out a new routine as a SAHM; I just may have a ton of more gray hairs before I do!